


we bleed and fight for you

by noblealice



Category: Push (2009)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Aged-Up Character(s), Babies, F/M, Swearing, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 14:30:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17082074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblealice/pseuds/noblealice
Summary: or Five Times Cassie Sees Nick with a Baby plus one time Nick sees Cassie with a Baby





	we bleed and fight for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [awesofying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awesofying/gifts).



 

The first time she has a vision of Nick with a baby she thinks she’s never been so fucking angry. She bites the inside of her cheek and pulls her fingers into a fist, the nails digging into her palm. It takes everything in her not to punch Nick in his stupid throat for being so careless.

 

He’s not being careless right now, as he’s currently researching the publicly-accessible floor plans of their next lead from the janky old library where they are laying low. But in her vision he was smiling and blowing raspberries at fussy baby. 

 

Just - How  _ dare _ he look so happy in the future when they can barely take care of themselves in this moment. She has no earthly idea how the fuck they’re going to take care of a baby. Or...an infant? She tries to do the math in her head from the last time they saw Kira and how old this new nuisance will be when they meet up.

 

She also tries to do the math for how long Cassie has until they are no longer woken up in the middle of the night just to flee Division but also to change dirty diapers. It’s not a charitable road of thoughts that she’s moving down but her arm still throbs in the rain from an old break and Nick has finally lost the last of his limp from when the idiot tried to catch her but ended up breaking her fall with a twisted ankle. The long and short of it - there’s no way they can handle a baby.

 

She doesn’t talk to him for three hours after the vision fades and when he asks about it she deflects with her new favourite weapon: “bad cramps”. 

 

It still makes him wince every time she mentions anything to do with her period and she takes a perverse joy out of making him uncomfortable, especially since he tried to have the world’s most misguided and awkward talk with her about Her Changing Body.

 

She asks him two days later if they can leave with no word to anyone where they’re going. He doesn’t question her and she feels a twinge bad for Kira, dealing with a baby all alone, but with enough vodka, she convinces herself that it’s not her problem. 

  
  


\----

  
  


She doesn’t see the vision again until two years later and almost pukes; a combination of surprise and the rickety bus they are travelling on. She blames it on the smell of the chickens that share the space with them but Nick continues to glance over at her with concern for the next leg of their trip. It isn’t until they have safely crossed the border that he’s back to cracking bad jokes in an attempt to make her smile. She gives him a pity grin, the poor soul is probably going to be  _ happy _ when he hears the news. He has such loving memories of his father that the bastard probably can’t wait to be a dad himself.

 

Whatever, she’s old enough that’s she’s just travelling with Nick as a courtesy and out of comfort more than anything else these days. She’ll just have to steal enough credit card information to book a solo ticket instead of a pair in the future. She’s been meaning to blaze her own path for a while; this was inevitable. 

 

She tells herself that she drinks that night because it’d be rude not to drink the local sake and not because she’ll  _ miss _ the big doofus. Fucking hell, she’s not a  _ sap _ .

 

“Maybe I’ll be the fun aunt. Send cool postcards and trinkets from faraway lands.” She muses after her fifth round.

 

“Whatever that means.” He doesn’t even so much as flick a sideways glance at her from his place on the bar stool next to her. He’s gotten much better at ignoring her bizarre little quirks. So long as she’s not seeing blood and gore, he’s happy, although never fully relaxed enough to drink more than two of whatever she’s having.

  
  


\----

  
  


The next time she has the vision she’s nineteen and actually pauses to notice details. She still can’t draw for shit but in her mind’s eye she tries to capture the look of elation on Nick’s face as he flies the baby around a pale yellow examination room. He’s making ridiculous airplane noises and the kid is gurgling happily, like it’s never known a moment of terror or panic. Like it’s never had to wonder where it’s next meal is coming from or if it’s mother is still alive and enduring the newest interrogation techniques.

 

Christ. She’s jealous of a fucking baby.

 

But, she rationalizes, Nick would be a great father. Y’know, if he wasn’t constantly on the run for his life. He’s her best friend in the whole world and more patient and caring than any of the girls they know deserve.

 

She purposely avoids wondering who the mother could be, but only because babies don’t really have any distinguishing features aside from general chubbiness. Not for any other reason.

  
  


\----

 

The fourth time she sees Nick holding a baby it’s for real. Shadows are the safest of them all, able to obscure their whereabouts, and it makes sense in a weird way that of all the people Cassie knows, Pinky would settle down first.

 

She debates telling Nick about her visions. They’re not guaranteed to come true. Maybe this is what she was seeing all those times before. Or maybe Nick choose left instead of right and missed out on parental bliss. 

 

Either way, he’ll just crinkle his eyes at her like he does when he thinks she’s being funny or fatalistic. And she doesn’t think she can handle that look, not when he’s still bouncing little Evan on his hip and creating a floating mobile from junk from around the room.

 

“You want to hold him?” Nick asks, smiling wide and still bouncing a little.

 

“Nah. Cooties and all that.” She replies, picking a piece of lint off her shoulder.

 

“He’s a sweetheart.”

 

“Too bad I’m such a bitch then.”

 

“Cassie.” He says her name with such tenderness it makes her shoulders tense up. 

 

He can’t always be patient with her, not when their lives depend on their finely honed instincts and bullshit detectors, but when they have down time like this, moments when life feels safe for a millisecond, he slows things down for her like he’s trying to give her a different life than the one they lead.

 

Sometimes it makes her roll her eyes, but right now it breaks her heart.

 

“C’mon, he’s going to need a diaper change and I don’t want to be be around when it happens.”

  
  


\----

  
  


(She never draws these visions. She trusts Nick not to go through her notebooks but there’s something permanent about marking them down out of the ether and onto a clean page. She always draws flowers instead. A good luck charm from what feels like a thousand years ago.

 

There are four now and she can’t bring herself to throw the pages out.)

  
  


\----

  
  


Okay, to her credit she has  _ a lot  _ of visions. At least three on a slow day; everything from the mundane to the dire and so she feels like she deserves some slack that she kinda forgot about this one since they were always on the run and trying to stay one step ahead of an evil corporation. It’s hell trying to keep track of something an inconsequential as her fucking menstrual cycle through all the shit she’s running from.

 

Things slip through the cracks all the time. Granted, this one is perhaps her most embarrassing lapse of memory because it means that she’s waiting for a pee stick to tell her future instead of her trusty notebooks. She’s mid panic while waiting for her phone timer when she gets a vision of Nick holding that damn cherub-faced baby as she tries to tamp down the bile rising in her throat.

 

This latest change in their relationship is still so new, she doesn’t have any clue as to Nick’s reaction. Sure, he’s happy in her vision but that’s at least nine months away when he’s had time to get used to the idea.

 

Fuck, what will her  _ mom _ think? She already doesn’t think Nick is a smart bet, has wanted Cassie to leave him for months now, always nagging on the infrequent phone calls they manage. Did she see this coming?

 

Cassie holds her head in her hands, every part of her body feeling heavy and foreign. What the fuck is she going to do now?

  
  


\---

 

Nick still hasn’t gotten used to Sarah Holmes sticking around for longer than it takes to scowl at him and bark directions but she has finally stopped hovering and actually allowed herself to sleep - a weakness he didn’t think she was capable of until he’d seen her crumple into a mass of blankets on the pull-out couch with his own eyes.

 

He’ll take the reprieve any way he can get it though and he gently walks back into the bedroom of the suite they’ve scammed this week. Cassie had promised that the baby wasn’t coming for another couple of days and that they should have one last fling of credit card fraud to pamper themselves before being ‘shackled down’. But Sarah had opened the door with a toddler in her arms just as Cassie popped the champagne and Nick knew that it was never going to be drunk.

 

After dealing with the Division sniffs they realized that if the card hadn’t be reported yet, they might as well enjoy whatever amenities and perks that a royal suite supplied. So far the room service and free laundry had been a godsend.

 

Cassie’s humming something to their new charge when he enters and he wishes she didn’t stop when she noticed him but she’s always been circumspect about showing affection since she once took his hand with a shaky, self-conscious smile.

 

She’s backlit and beautiful. His heart stops at a view he never thought he’d be lucky enough to see every day, especially with how dangerous their lives are. He has no clue how they’re going to protect a strange kid as well when it’s only in the last year or so that they’ve had any leg up on Division activities.

 

“Stop worrying about it.” Cassie doesn’t look up from where the little girl is sleeping in her arms. “We’re safe here until the end of the week at least.”

 

“I’ve heard that line before.”

 

“Well, you weren’t going to make your move if you knew we’d be interrupted.”

 

“Forgive me for not wanting to be shot at with my pants down around my ankles.”

 

“How’d I end up with such a prude?”

 

“Probably the same way we ended up with some propheted super-kid, just the fucked up ways of the universe.”

 

He hesitates before speaking again, remembering her naked fear during a close call over a pregnancy test that had her in tears. “You okay with this? It’s a lot to take in.”

 

“Yeah, I mean, well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but we always figure it out somehow.” 

 

He wishes he could offer her something better than 'figuring it out somehow', wishes that he had an actual job instead of a string of casinos he's blacklisted from, but Cassie looks peaceful in this moment so he climbs up on the bed and lays down next to her, leaning his head on her shoulder. 

 

He drifts off to sleep thinking he could be perfectly content to live in this bubble forever. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> In a very early draft I actually had Cassie get pregnant but it just didn't feel authentic to her character. Plus, I love found families and this was a great way to still have Chris Evans holding a baby in my imagination without having to deal with logistics other than 'Cassie's mother shows up with a toddler out of the blue'. 
> 
> A random wikia article I read a year ago listed Cassie's mother as Sarah but I can't find it now. I have no idea if that's just a fanon "fact". 
> 
> And yes, I have been 'writing' this for over a year. I'm glad to finally get it out of my drafts.


End file.
